We’re lucky where we live. There’s a small, old-fashioned produce store just a couple blocks away—the kind that feels like a step back in time. Fresh harvests come straight from the farm, arranged by the season. The air smells of earth and fruit, and everything looks as rich and alive as it must’ve been in the fields.
I’d gone there to pick up vegetables for broth—carrots, celery, onions. The staples. As I browsed, something caught the corner of my eye. Bright, red, glistening cherries. Among the greens and muted browns, their color stood out like a memory trying to be remembered.
I bought them, of course. I couldn’t resist. While I was bagging them up, a thought crept in: When was the last time I had cherries? Then another: When was the first? The question sat there in my mind, pulling me back, further and further, until I landed in the backyard of my childhood home.
I was four. There was a cherry tree in the yard, not far from the house. It was tall and sturdy, its branches reaching wide like it had always been there, waiting. My dad would pick me up, his hands firm and steady, and hold me high so I could pluck the cherries right off the branches. I remember how sweet they were, how the juice would run down my fingers and chin, sticky and red. I’d spit the seeds onto the ground and laugh as they landed in the grass.
When I got a little older, I didn’t need Dad to lift me anymore. By then, I could climb the tree on my own. I’d scramble up the rough bark, find a sturdy branch, and sit there like I belonged to the sky. The cherries were my secret feast, their sweetness too good to wait for dinner. I’d eat as many as I could, knowing my mother would scold me later for spoiling my appetite. But it didn’t matter. Those moments were mine—just me, the tree, and the cherries.
There was always an end, though. By the fall, the tree would go quiet, its branches bare, its fruit dropped to the ground to rot and return to the earth. I’d walk by the tree in the winter, looking up at its bare limbs, and wonder how long until the cherries came back. And when spring arrived, the anticipation began again. The blossoms came first, and then the green buds. And finally, the cherries—bright, red jewels that seemed like little gifts from the tree to me.
As I stood in the produce stand with a bag of cherries in hand, I couldn’t help but smile at those memories. It wasn’t just the taste of cherries that made them special—it was the whole ritual. The waiting, the climbing, the sticky hands, and the quiet joy of stealing a piece of the summer for myself. It was the kind of simple, perfect pleasure that’s harder to find as you grow older.
The cherries in my bag weren’t from my backyard tree. They didn’t come with the same sense of wonder or the thrill of reaching up into the branches. But they carried something else: a reminder of what it felt like to be a child, to find joy in something small and fleeting. To understand, even for a moment, that the best things in life don’t last forever—and that’s what makes them so sweet.
I took the cherries home, set them on the counter, and couldn’t help but pluck one from the bag. The taste was familiar, but different. Still, it was enough to bring back the feeling of sitting in the tree, looking out over the yard, the world so much smaller and simpler than it is now. And for that moment, I was four again, with sticky hands and a mouth full of cherries, believing that nothing could ever taste so good.